What garden maintenance need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
We make Nexa, and we haven't tested either product with a working gardener. This read rests on each vendor's published feature list and on the licensing and tax rules for the trade, so it can miss things either product does. Treat what follows as a checklist to test, not a ruling. QuickBooks covers the money side of a maintenance business well. It has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ integrations and a name accountants already know. It also includes phone support on a paid plan and a 30-day free trial with no contract. The plan that does the core job is $38/month. Its list shows nothing that records a worker's pesticide license status or flags which visits involved pesticide. In California, a gardener who applies any pesticide, even incidentally, needs the DPR license and county registration, and clients can look that status up. So license and registration numbers, and a record of pesticide visits, would live in notes or a separate log. The list also doesn't say whether an invoice can show materials apart from labor. In New Jersey that decides whether the materials are taxed. A lump-sum bill is fully taxable at 6.625%, and separately listed materials are not. Use the free trial to build one such invoice before you commit.
Nexa suits the field work. Recurring jobs and recurring invoices fit weekly routes, and a winter service such as snow removal could run as its own recurring job. It shows costing and profit per job, assigns jobs to crew members who see their own, and sends the day's stops to Google Maps in time order. On the books side it has sales tax tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, cash flow and 1099 summaries. Its gaps matter here. It has no license field, so license and registration numbers would go in notes or tags, the same workaround as with QuickBooks. A client record has no street-address field, which is awkward when every client is a property. It has no job templates, route optimization or dispatch board, and it doesn't run payroll taxes or pay stubs. It can't import from or sync with QuickBooks, so a move means re-entering history. Its automated emails, such as reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. You run it yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. We also can't confirm from its list that it itemizes materials separately from labor, so test that too.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38/month costs $1,368 ($456 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. With Cloud Sync at $4.99/month it comes to $458.64, and without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. A solo gardener with no accountant, mostly recurring routes and a hand-kept license log could save real money with Nexa. Stay with QuickBooks if an accountant already works in it, if you rely on its bank feeds, integrations or phone support, or if you can't absorb a move with no import path. Also stay if you need reminders to go out without keeping an app open, or if you need a street address on each client record. Neither tool tracks pesticide licensing for you, so keep a separate license and visit log either way.
Our read for garden maintenance: Stay with QuickBooks if you have an accountant, rely on its bank feeds or phone support, or need clients' street addresses and reminders that don't depend on an open app. Nexa is only worth the move for a solo gardener with recurring routes and no history to carry over.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs garden maintenance $456/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.3 months it has cost less than QuickBooks, and you own it after that. What it is not: hosted-for-you software with a support desk and a roadmap you can lobby. That is the trade, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.
Nexa is $279 once, about $23 a month over its first year. Its Drain Guard reads your expenses (from a linked bank, an imported statement, or ones you type in), finds the charges that repeat, and adds them up by the month. Keep or Cut then walks you through them one at a time. Cancel $23 a month of charges you'd forgotten about and Nexa has paid for itself inside the first year, before you count the QuickBooks bill you'd stop paying.
It depends on what you find and what you cancel, so we don't promise a number. In our demo data, Drain Guard finds 5 subscriptions adding up to $110.13 a month. That is sample data, not a customer's.
The verdict for garden maintenance: Stay with QuickBooks if the needs in our read above apply to you. If they don't, Nexa covers the core invoicing, scheduling and books for $279 once against $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Scheduling, job tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
None of that is a software problem you can buy your way out of in one click — it is why the tool you pick matters more than what it costs. QuickBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $38/month — $456 a year, from QuickBooks's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $1,089 less.
If QuickBooks raises its price, the three-year cost goes up; if it cuts it, the cost comes down. We don't guess which. Add-ons, extra seats and card-processing fees are not included, on either side.
Today's sticker price only tells you what a subscription costs today. These are dated changes, each linked to the announcement or report it comes from. Tap one for the numbers.
For renewals on or after February 1, 2026, Pro Plus and Mac Plus went from $999 to $1,149 a year for one user, and each extra seat from $200 to $230.
Source: SWK Technologies, Insightful Accountant (Dec 2, 2025)
From July 1, 2025: Simple Start $35 to $38, Essentials $65 to $75, Plus $99 to $115, Advanced $235 to $275 a month.
Source: Woodard Report (May 27, 2025)
After September 30, 2024, new US customers can no longer buy these Desktop editions. Existing subscribers can keep renewing.
Source: Intuit
Only changes we can link to a vendor announcement or a named publication are listed. Plans, add-ons and discounts vary, so check the vendor's current pricing page before you decide.
| Feature | QuickBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $38/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,368 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for QuickBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as QuickBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from QuickBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
QuickBooks is the better call if you need industry standard - accountants know it specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
QuickBooks Online is aimed at freelancers and new businesses, small and mid-size businesses, product-based businesses, and nonprofits. Larger or more complex operations are pointed to Desktop Enterprise (up to 40 users) or Intuit Enterprise Suite (multi-entity). (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What people outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa say:
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every garden maintenance gardener: find the work, manage it, bill for it, get paid. Each step has a tool — and the right single tool runs the whole loop, so the handoffs are automatic and you get back to the actual work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
You can stitch four separate subscriptions across these four steps, or run one tool that does the whole flow so a booking becomes a job becomes an invoice becomes a payment without re-typing. Either way the goal is the same: less time on the business of the business, more on the actual work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A garden maintenance gardener's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Garden Maintenance Gardener earns $38,000/year. At $456/year, QuickBooks is a recurring slice of that — paid again every year, whether the year was good or not. Owning the same jobs outright is $279 once, and the slice stops.
Nexa is $279 once. Invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, accounting — all connected, built for garden maintenance. You own it like you own your Bypass and anvil pruners plus long-handled loppers.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small garden maintenance business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
Scheduling, job tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
The morning starts at a walled cottage garden where the herbaceous border has flopped after the rain, so I stake and tie the delphiniums, deadhead the roses to push another flush, and cut back the hardy geraniums to get fresh foliage. The bindweed is twining up everything again, so I trace each stem to the root and pull rather than snap it. I edge the lawn with a half-moon and rake the clippings onto the tarp. Next is a formal front garden with box hedging that I shear by eye to keep the lines crisp, watching for the tell-tale brown patches of box blight along the bottom. After lunch I'm at a new client's neglected plot, mostly assessing: the apple needs winter pruning but it's the wrong season, the shrub roses want a hard cut in spring, and the whole back bed is choked with ground elder I'll have to tackle in stages. I weed the gravel paths, sweep, and load three tarps of green waste to take to the tip because there's no compost area. I water in the newly planted perennials, feed the tomatoes in the greenhouse, and finish by walking the garden with the client to flag what's coming up next month so nothing surprises either of us.
Real garden maintenance near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a garden maintenance gardener? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every garden maintenance gardener on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
We build a garden maintenance gardener's guide the same way every time, and we'd rather you trust it than take it on faith. Nexa is our product, so the test we hold ourselves to is simple: a tool only "wins" a job here when it genuinely does that job better for a garden maintenance gardener — and where something free, open-source, or buy-once does it better, we say so and link you to it. Where Nexa falls short (payroll is the honest example), we name the alternative outright.
Found something out of date? Prices change and we don't catch every move the day it happens. This guide is published and maintained by the Nexa team; if a figure here is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it — getting it right matters more to us than the sale.
For solo garden maintenance and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. QuickBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
QuickBooks has features like Industry standard - accountants know it and 800+ app integrations that some businesses rely on. For most solo garden maintenance, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $38/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.3 months. After that: $456 saved every year.
Yes. Nexa is $279 as a one-time payment, or 3 payments of $99 ($297 total). Either way it's a one-time purchase — no subscription, no recurring fees ever.
Own your tools. Stop renting your software.
Get Nexa — $279 Once